Matinee #3 - Final Four!

Missile to the Moon is the featured attraction for installment #9 of the Saturday Matinee Series #3 at the Parkway Theater in south Minneapolis. Needless to remind, this series is available for anyone to show in their movie theater or as a 12-part TV series. One of the regulars commented about Missile on Facebook: "This was one of the few "bad" SF movies from the 50's that I hadn't seen yet (or, if I did, I had completely blocked it from my memory). Man, what a stinker! But it was still worth watching." He also added that no one walked out! The film is also in the Roxy "Turkeys in Space" series. I put the highlights into the trailer that appeared in the previous week's Matinee, and those highlights are 1) A moon woman hypnotizing the hero, 2) A giant spider attack, and 3) Brief glimpse of the Rock Men threatening one of the teenagers who is about to expire due to greed and the script.

The shorts were at least entertaining. "Dancing on the Moon" is a Max Fleischer color classic about a nightly honeymoon flight to the moon on board a rocket ship. The passengers are pairs of animals -- 2 bears, giraffes, elephants, etc. Mr. Cat screws up and gets left behind while his new bride goes lunar by herself. Naturally she returns to earth fuming and the stork does NOT bestow on them a blessed event. All the other animals get stork-delivered babies but the cat stork only lands and shakes his head. Also featured were trailers to "Abbott and Costello Go to Mars," "Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers" and other vintage 1950s Sci-Fi.

Program 10 was all Gene Autry, what with the serial chapter from the Phantom Empire and his best film from the 1930s, The Big Show, which I feel can be enjoyed by non-western fans because it is a contemporary film about Hollywood and fame. Gene plays two roles, the first as a haughty cowboy star making B-movies for a Republic studio look-alike. He also plays the amiable stunt man for the star who can ride, fight and sing. When the prima donna takes a walk, Gene is enlisted by the studio to impersonate him at the Texas Centennial celebration. Spectacle scenes were actually filmed at the Centennial, and are fascinating for preserving that history. Lots of music and guest groups. In one scene these four stars appear together: Gene Autry, Smiley Burnette, Roy Rogers as one of the Sons of the Pioneers, and 3 Mesquiteers ventriloquist Max Terhune.

Many of the Matinee programs are not really aimed at kids and are not true recreations of the Saturday Matinee Experience. I aim for variety and to entertain the older audience that just enjoys following the serial, cartoons and seeing vintage films in a movie theater. Hence I took a chance and featured Tod Slaughter in program #11 -- Crimes At the Dark House (1940). A madman kills a man who has just inherited a large estate, then impersonates his victim to gain entrance to the estate so he can murder his enemies. Mr. Slaughter portrays a Victorian villain out of an old-fashioned melodrama, that I find delightfully tongue-in-cheek. In the first scene he puts a chisel to the head of the sleeping villain and pounds away. The cartoons feature this kind of stereotype villain in Chukc Jones' The Dover Boys and Cubby Bear in Sinister Stuff. I got the idea to include this film when Johnny Legend told me he saw Tod Slaughter films as a kid in Hollywood at matinees and also when I acquired a better video master.

The Matinee series closes out with Buster Keaton in Speak Easily (1932). Naive, bookish Professor Post (of Potts College) inherits a huge amount of money and decides that now he can afford to go out and enjoy life. He falls for a dancer in a bad stage show, and with his new money decides to buy the show and take it to Broadway. Will the Professor prove too nice to succeed in show business? Or will he triumph over bill-collectors, critics, and sexy vamp Eleanor Espere? The MGM features that Keaton made with Jimmy Durante are universally despised by Buster's fans, but I kind of like it. How bad can it be with Thelma Todd and Sidney Toler in the supporting cast? In a great scene, Buster gets trapped onstage during the musical he financed and his unwitting blunders add the needed comedy that saves the show.

Plus the final chapter of The Phantom Empire in which the underground super-city of Murania melts into nothingness. The melting scenes totally astounded audiences of the time and are still impressive in their "special effects," as in how the heck did they do that.


Visit my website at Festival Films.

Auction Action!

Emovieposter.com broke their big Mini/Major auction into 3 parts. My six lobby cards were in part 1 that ended Tuesday evening. Here is a link to all of the posters with final prices. I believe the Babe Ruth insert poster fetched the most at $9,700, likely because of the cross over interest to baseball fans.

Certainly there were bidders out there willing to spend money. My six lobby cards eventually sold at respectable prices in the ballpark to what identical posters had gone for in past auctions. My thanks to "crowzilla" (bidding name) whoever you are for taking my 3 most expensive cards for a total of $2,026! I wish I knew how much higher you would have gone if the runner ups had increased their bids. The Lady from Shanghai card went for the most, as I predicted, at $901. Notorious sold for $713 and Suspicion for $412, all to Mr. crowzilla. Suspicion was the biggest surprise since I don't think it's all that great an image and the most it had sold for in previous auctions was $485.

I thought Shadow of a Doubt would sell for more than $310. Haunted House with the great close-up of Thelma Todd went for $408 and the lowest seller was The First Kiss at $171. I suspect "Kiss" will go up in the future since it seems to be the only known lobby card with Gary Cooper and the ever-popular Fay Wray. All of these posters are pictured in last week's blog entry.

In total my posters sold for $2,900. I feel good about selling them now at sizable prices, and would have been disappointed if they sold for half of that. The auction house keeps around 25% so I should get a check in the $2,200 range in about 6 weeks. They still need to collect the money and ship the posters. They deserve that much commission since I could never have found buyers with money and I don't trust auctioning myself on ebay.

I placed a few bids myself in this auction, namely on this lobby card for Tobor the Great which I was considering as a Christmas present. It did not have many early bidders, although it once sold for $175 at auction. I bid $45 and it sold for $73. I don't regret not getting it.

Will I auction more through emovieposters.com? I think so, yes. Wish I had comparable material.



See my public domain catalog and Café Roxy programs for movie theaters, etc. at Festival Films

The Great Poster Auction

I submitted six rare lobby cards to Bruce Hershenson's summer Mini/Major Auction at emovieposter.com. They can all be spotted in the above collage of 32 lobby cards featured in the auction. Click on the photo to view larger size. Bruce holds 3 poster auctions every week, but four times a year a special Mini/Major auction only sells top quality rare posters. These auctions get more publicity thru weekly email newsletters to over 6,000 collectors. I suspect every major poster collector in the world checks in to see what is offered.

I thought the timing might be right to sell some prizes that have languished in a box for twenty years or more, but the economy is slow and so many great posters are being auctioned that I may be disappointed. There is no minimum bid, so a poster that sold five years ago for $700 might go for $250 or less. But now may be a better time to sell than six months from now if and when large poster collections are dumped on the open market so the owners can make ends meet. This page link shows 5 of my posters. I don't know how long the page will be up after the auction.

This brings up the larger question of whether movie posters are good investments in the long run. (I don't know beans about it, but can speculate.) Perhaps not for posters that are mainly of interest to fans of a particular star or genre. Years ago a friend found a small stack of Buck Jones lobby cards in an antique store, bought them for around $75 and re-sold to a western dealer for $900, and then that dealer made money because he knew multiple Buck Jones collectors. How many of them are left? What would those lobby cards sell for today no matter how rare?

Certainly the cream of the crop posters of classic films, horror & sci-fi films, Disney animation, etc., will only increase in value. That's what I hope I put up for sale. The Lady From Shanghai lobby card may fetch the most because it is an iconic image featuring two undying legends, Orson Welles and Rita Hayworth. The hall of mirrors epitomizes the shadowy ambiguity of the film noir underworld. This is the only American poster image of that scene, and the lobby card is fairly rare because emovieposter.com has never auctioned this one before. Heritage House Auction Galleries sold one in 2006 for $956, several other copies and finally one in 2008 for $2,868! Final sale price can depend on condition, but mainly whether several people want it! Will it soar in value in the next ten years? I don't know what to expect, but I'll venture mine sells in the $650 range. As of Friday morning $417 has been bid via 15 bids so the interest is surely there. The auction ends Tuesday night.

The second lobby card is from the lost 1928 film The First Kiss starring Gary Cooper and Fay Wray. Both stars are still famous and appealing and Fay Wray has a cult following from King Kong. It's a passionate image illustrating the title of the film, and may be the only known copy in the world because I could not find the poster anywhere on the Internet. However, it has not been auctioned before to my knowledge so there is no reference price. All I need are two Fay Wray fans bidding against each other to get a good price. Auctions are funny that way or so I hear. So far it is up to $35 bid, but by 7 bidders so there is hope of a high price.

Next up is another lost, silent film from 1928: The Haunted House. Emovieposter sold one in 2005 for $787. It certainly falls in the evergreen horror genre, and the girl being menaced by Montagu Love is cult figure Thelma Todd who has a huge following. Currently at $155 with only 2 bidders. Someone may get a bargain.

The last three lobby cards are all from Alfred Hitchcock films of the 1940s -- title cards (meaning the main one) from Notorious and Shadow of a Doubt, and the glass of milk card from Suspicion. Emovieposter sold the Notorious card in 2007 for $1,316. (Currently 8 bids; $220) The one pictured here is a scan of my actual poster and shows off the slight discoloration due to the natural age. They sold a Shadow of a Doubt lobby card exactly like mine in 2007 for $667 (currently 5 bids; $140) and a Suspicion (currently 9 bids; $166) in 2007 for $485.

Since I only paid about $10 each over 20 years ago, my investment in lobby cards I spotted at the Syracuse Cinefest and could not walk away from was certainly a wise decision. With over 4 days to go, indications are that Lady From Shanghai could skyrocket. The others, who knows? Many bidders wait until the last moment to put in their high bid, so that the previous high bidder will not have time to reconsider if he wants to go even higher.








Visit my website at Festival Films

P.D. Robot Vs. Federal Agent

In 1994 my family (me, wife Chris, son Jeff and brother-in-law Scott Johnson) decided to attend the Mystery Science Theater 3000 convention. The show was produced in the Twin Cities and we were fans at the tail end of the Joel Hodgson era. Actually Joel had just left the show and did not attend the convention, but Trace Beaulieu, TV's Frank Coniff, Jim Mallon, Kevin Murphy and Mike Anderson were there plus special guests like Kim Cattrall and Beverly Garland. The convention was held in a Raddison hotel in a southern suburb about 20 minutes from our home. We attended a Friday panel discussion, MST3K live show in a theater and the Saturday night party.

It was a costume party to come as your favorite character from any movie lampooned on the show. There were two costume categories to enter: 1) Torgo from Manos, the Hands of Fate (1966) and 2) Non-Torgo. Jeff and Scott went as Torgo, and can be briefly glimpsed in the video you will watch after reading this. Torgo wears rags and a tattered hat, has a padded, gimpy leg and lurches about on a cane stuttering the way Torgo talks, of course. There must have been 50 Torgos at the party; they invited a dozen or so on stage to do their walk & talk like Torgo all at the same time.

Because we knew several months ahead that we would attend, I had too much time to work on my costume. As you have already guessed from the picture, I built a robot costume like the one in the Bela Lugosi serial The Phantom Creeps. It took about two months to build. The head was sculpted in clay and cast in fiberglass, a skill I had picked up building props at the Guthrie Theater for ten years. In retrospect I built the head way too big, considerably bigger than the serial robot head. I started building so I could peak through the mouth and the rest followed. It was probably a more effective costume being too large, since I am only average build at six foot tall and the big head pushed it well above 7 feet.

So about 10:30 on Saturday night, Sept. 17, we got to the hotel for the "Glittering Costume Ball." I unpacked the robot pieces and put them on in the parking lot. Chris had the camcorder and filmed my famous walk as "Robot in a Parking Lot" for the ages. The robot walks into the party, turns around in a confused daze and then... that was all we got on film. Afterward Chris said "The camera just cut off and I couldn't get it going again," or something similar. All I remember is sweating like a watermelon, going outside for a break and taking the head off, then back in. Hey, I won first prize! Second prize went to a woman who wore a laboratory table and went as The Brain That Wouldn't Die. My prize was a Devil Dog prop pictured here that was used in some MST3K sketch. They had a stage about five feet off the ground and I recall almost tripping as I walked down it after getting the prize. On Monday a photo of the robot appeared in the New York Times. Someday I'll find that photo in some box!

So we only got one minute of footage at the convention ( and one minute of national fame) but we also filmed several minutes at home a few days before with some ominous music playing and Jeff filming the embarrassment with a shaky camera. I didn't look at the footage for years, but suddenly everything we had shot 16 years ago came in handy.

I got an email and had a few discussions with Nick Villa who has a website called Old School Horror. His idea is to make public domain horror films available for online streaming/viewing with the twist that they will be introduced by a horror host like Count Dracula. Horror hosting has been done on TV since the 1950s, but not on the Internet. Our discussion was how Festival Films might fit into his plans and I gave him some copyright advice. Nick mentioned he would be happy to give a link to my site.

This got me wondering why any normal person would want to visit my site since it is geared toward TV stations, movie theaters, video companies, etc., who are intentionally seeking public domain films. The answer was to create a page that anyone could go to for a few minutes entertainment, then investigate my others pages if interested. Public domain showings can be used by anyone at all, even if they had never considered doing so. Hence the video and web page P.D. Robot Vs. Federal Agent was created. I cut my robot footage into scenes from the Bela Lugosi serial, a project in the back of my mind for some time. In the process I gave my robot the name of "P.D. (for Public Domain) Robot," and a whimsical plot evolved! P.D. fights for Freedom of Usage as he conquers the evil Federal Agent and flees from the army. Then there is a surprise ending. So go watch it and enjoy.

Anyone out there with a website, please link to the P.D. Robot page!



Visit my website at Festival Films

Happy Trails to Roy Rogers!

New York — The smell of horses and hay permeated the marble-floored galleries at Christie's in Manhattan last week as potential bidders previewed items including the preserved remains of movie cowboy Roy Rogers' famous horse Trigger. The auction house is selling items from the now-closed Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum in Branson, Mo., Wednesday and Thursday.

Unlike the fine furniture, paintings and jewelry that Christie's is famous for, the centerpiece of this auction is a stuffed and mounted horse rearing on its hind legs. It also will feature another type of horsepower - Rogers' 1964 Bonneville convertible adorned with collectible silver dollars, its door handles and gear shift replaced by silver-plated pistols.

Here are some Christie's photos of the Roy Rogers memorabilia up for sale. Everything up for bidding was on display, including the actual stuffed Trigger (sold for over $266,000), Trigger Jr., Bullet ($35K) and Dale's horse Buttermilk ($25K). Christie's said Rogers' faithful companion was bought by cable's RFD-TV in Omaha, Nebraska. CFO Steve Campione says the company hopes to start its own museum. He said the company is looking to buy more Rogers items at auction.

One item they should not have trouble finding on ebay for $50 is a 1943 issue of Life magazine featuring Roy on the cover and an inside story. Amazingly it sold for $1,375 at Christies, but that's a quirk of auctions! Could it be worth that much more just because Roy actually touched it? Someone who did not consider that thousands of other copies likely survive must have thought so. The much more collectable movie posters sold for under $1,000 each.

Roy started his museum in Hollywood around 1958. One can imagine fans flocking to the museum for years to relive memories of their cowboy hero whose movies and TV shows were still syndicated on TV, and for the chance to meet Roy and Dale if they happened to drop by. But time passes, heroes fade and fans travel less. Roy died in 1998 and Dale Evans in 2001. In 2003 Roy Rogers Jr. (Dusty Rogers) moved the entire museum to Branson, Missouri in search of an elusive fan base that continued to diminish, and the museum closed for good in December of 2009.

Roy's fans who watched him in Saturday Matinees in the 1930s and 40s are now in their 70s and 80s. This included most boys in America, a huge fan base, but not that many are left who still watch the old movies. I was part of the second wave who caught westerns on TV in the early 1950s and watched first run all the spin-off TV westerns of that decade -- The Roy Rogers Show, Hopalong Cassidy, Gene Autry, Annie Oakley, The Range Rider, Buffalo Bill Jr., Kit Carson and more. These TV shows were exactly like the B-westerns with clear heroes, villains, fights, chases and gun play. By the late 1950s "adult" westerns like Bonanza and Gunsmoke began to take over the airwaves.

In 1988 Roy and Dale hosted a series called "Happy Trails Theater," which I believe appeared on Los Angeles TV. They introduced and discussed each film, often with guests like Iron Eyes Cody, Eddie Dean and son Dusty. Then they showed one of Roy's classic westerns. Many of these were issued on DVD by Goodtimes Video and are available from Netflix. Watch them all, but especially get Bells of Coronado because Roy's guests are Gene Autry and Pat Buttram. Gene and Roy discuss how they got their horses. The 1950 film itself is in Trucolor, features Dale and Pat Brady and is directed by top Republic action man William Witney.

Roy Rogers' features and TV shows are still very accessible on DVD, the Internet or Café Roxy programs and just as much fun as they ever were ... if and when young viewers take a chance and watch one. I will keep pitching them to TV stations and movie theater revivals. So Adios, Roy and Dale, you will never be forgotten!



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Vacation Break!

Quite simply, I will be away on vacation from July 2 thru July 10, so I won't have a new post here until I get back into the swing of things, at the latest on July 16.

Today is a hodge-podge of topics. First is my great lobby card auction experiment. I have 6 fairly rare and hopefully desirable lobby cards consigned to the emovieposter.com Mini/Major summer auction. Probably the least valuable one is pictured here -- a lobby card from Alfred Hitchcock's "Suspicion." I will show the others and make guesses for what they will bring as soon as I get the scan for the mystery, one-only lobby card hinted at a few weeks ago.

Go check out the emovieposter.com website. Bruce Hershenson and his staff of 22 run their own poster auctions (not on ebay), send a weekly poster email newsletter to over 6,000, and have the eyes of the major movie poster collectors in the world. They run 3 auctions each week with over 2,000 posters up for sale and no minimum bid. However, several times a year they hold special "Mini/Major" auctions with better, rarer posters and more publicity. The Summer Mini/Major starts on July 27 and will run online for a week.

One lesser poster has already been auctioned off. This window card for "From here to Eternity" sold for $53, before commissions, so I may net $30. The time is ripe for getting good deals on vintage movie posters and the place to shop is emovieposter.com.

Twice this past week I was talking to new customers who asked where they could see the films before buying. One had a special interest in black heritage films as he plans to make a documentary for TV on the subject. The other just wanted to run films or clips from PD films online for some reason not quite clear, and I don't need to know specifics. They are public domain, so use them however you want as long as you don't add a funny sound track, or similar changes, since that would be creating a new work that might infringe on the trademarked likenesses of stars like John Wayne or Boris Karloff.

Anyway, naturally I told them to go to FMO or www.freemooviesonline.com. The second party called me right back and said, "It looks good, but it doesn't work. When I tried to run a film, it sent me some notice about hacking in." So I tried it and he was right. An email to Franck Benedittini at franck.box@gmail.com and the glitch was fixed in a few minutes. So if you had trouble watching FMO after my last week post, please try again, and contact one of us if you have any problems. Oh, yeah, no charge!

I continue to update my Festival Films website by replacing some PDF links with actual web pages that fit into the general design. I find the new look immensely better and easier to navigate. As an example check out Adventure TV section. This Adventure home page identifies the TV shows in that genre and how many episodes we have of each. One click takes you to any TV show where the episodes are grouped together in bunches of four with episode titles and brief synopses. Once I finish this process I can add in shows that I have not listed online before, such in "Captain Z-RO" to Adventure TV, or add additional volumes to what I have sold in the past. All 143 episodes of Robin Hood are now listed. I may be missing one??? I liberally define "Adventure" as any non-western that includes fist fights or gun play, so that means space films, Sergeant Preston of the Yukon, period sword fight shows, jungle pictures and foreign intrigue.

Happy Birthday, Baxter! Today is the two-year anniversary of Baxter the Cat coming into our lives. We visited the humane society and he crawled into my wife Chris' lap ... when she was standing up as I recall. When a cat picks you, who can say no? Ah, but he was sick with some virus and came from an abusive kittyhood. He didn't eat for over a week. We squirted medicine in his mouth, but no food. We took him to the vet to be hydrated and got a few tips. Finally back home we followed one advice to simply force some food in his mouth. Baxter re-discovered food and ate everything we spilled on the basement floor. After a long recovery in the summer of 2008, he's the sweetest, most loyal and most incredibly good-looking cat we have ever had. This shot of me holding Baxter was taken last summer.

And I just may wear that shirt to the Caribbean on Friday, where I should also be smiling a lot.


Visit my website at Festival Films

Free Moovies Online!

I can be rather slow about ... connecting ... dots.

Two weeks ago I was in a conversation with the customer who ordered They Came From Beyond Space for showing in a movie theater. At one point he said: "I've already seen it on Youtube. I had to watch it in 7 sections. It's a pretty good film." After a delayed reaction of several days, I realized I should have replied: "That's nice. I'm glad you thought to view a film I offer for content, then come to me for the best version that includes some trailers, cartoons, a poster to make it a show, etc. However, there is a much better place to watch films online!

And that place is... dot-da-dah...



Click on the FMO logo above or click here -- Free Moovies Online -- to see what I'm talking about.

FMO is the brainchild of Franck Benedittini, who works out of French Guiana. Frank began as a web developer and website designer in 2004 and has created hundreds of websites. His own FMO site is a marvelously attractive, easy-to-use link to all things MOVIE, like his daily blog, his online magazine with extensive stories on John Wayne, Laurel and Hardy, Tarzan, etc., helpful links to the TCM site, Youtube, current trailers, and much more.

The heart of FMO website is the free movies you can watch online that look better than those on Youtube and are complete with one click. The "About Me" section states:

"Created in August 2007, FreeMooviesOnline (FMO) is an entertainment website that offers the largest selection of free public domain feature films on the Internet. With over 2000 public domain movies, TV shows, TV series episodes, cartoons and feature animations, FMO has something for everyone.

"FMO is a legal service. All of the films and television episodes on FMO are in the public domain. This means that the works were either never properly copyrighted, or their copyrights were allowed to expire and were never renewed as required by copyright law. Therefore, they are all now in the public domain, free and clear of copyright infringement laws.

"The professionals who work with FMO have a vast knowledge of the film and television industries, and have over 30 years of experience in the public domain business as well."

I have been supplying FMO with public domain films for just over two years. That's why I know he will soon be offering Holt of the Secret Service serial, Planet of the Dinosaurs, Adventures of Jim Bowie, Captain Z-Ro TV, Earthworm Tractors, Three Guys Named Mike, and others. I am pleased to be one of the "Professionals" associated with Franck and FMO.

Another part about me being slow is that I am finally telling my website visitors about FMO. My Festival Films home page sports a prominent link to FMO, and FMO links back to Festival Films. It is an ideal link exchange. I am happy that my customers can watch films before buying programs so they know what they will get. Many of my public domain films can be viewed free at FMO and more will appear in the months ahead.

Few FMO visitors will want to buy the films on DVD-R. They go to FMO to watch and have fun. For FREE! I think I said that. However, lots and lots of them go there. The average is 20,000 to 30,000 a day, and last December reached one million for the month. That is a lot of visitors and some just might be the special consumers I am looking for. The link from FMO to Festival Films says: "Festival Films. Public domain films for TV stations and movie theaters. High-quality, low-cost masters of DVD-R." A blog entry at FMO this past week states:

"Festival Films has been in business for a long time selling 16mm Films, DVDs, stock footage, Video Masters and Movie Posters.

This company is a true mine of classic films for Movie Theaters, TV Stations, Film Societies, Restaurants and Bars who are equipped to show films from DVD for either large screen TVs or video projection. If you fall in such category, you certainly need the best possible quality and assurance that each film is in the public domain. Festival Films will supply this information with each film and you can benefit greatly by getting Programs that include cartoons or shorts. All the films are clean with no company logos or watermarks over the picture. Also, Festival Films offers a quality guarantee – if any film is below par they will replace with a different title. Festival Films offers a FREE SAMPLER DVD to test how your customers like it!"

"Keep in mind that FMO doesn’t allow you to download the videos; it’s against our Terms of Use. However, you have the possiblity to purchase your favorite cult movies at Festival Films."


Visit my website at Festival Films and see the new link to FMO. When you want to preview a film, click over and see if FMO has it. If not, tell either of us and FMO will have it soon!